


Superhuman Resources

by Karabair (likeadeuce)



Category: Avengers (Comic), Marvel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/Karabair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Maximoffs want some time off.  Steve might not be cut out for middle management.  Tony is enjoying every minute of this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Superhuman Resources

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyo/gifts).



> I set this during the "kooky quartet" days of Avengers Vol. 1, when the team consisted of Steve, and former villains Wanda, Pietro, and Clint Barton aka Hawkeye. Tony is the "money man", which is why there's some misunderstanding about who is the boss, but his identity as Iron Man isn't known to the team.

Wanda Maximoff sat, hands in her lap, fingers twisting nervously around a pair of scarlet gloves that she had taken off as soon as she stepped into Steve's office. She looked down as she spoke, and he had to lean forward to hear her soft, accented voice.

"I wonder, that is, my brother and I, we wanted to ask you or –" Wanda glanced back toward Pietro, who leaned in the doorframe behind her. He stood half in the room, half in the hallway, as though he wasn't quite committed to being present and might dash off at any moment. His lip curled in a vague sneer, but Steve couldn't tell if it was a commentary on the conversation, or just his customary expression.

"Quicksilver?" Steve addressed the young man, hopefully. The awkwardness of this moment was nearly oppressive, and Steve had no idea why, because he hadn't the slightest idea what Wanda was trying to ask. He hoped her brother might help.

"Oh no, sister." Pietro shook his head. "This is your little notion. You ought to be the one to inquire."

"Yes. Of course. Mister Captain America, sir." Wanda lifted her chin and forced a smile at him.

"You can call me, er . . ." Her formality made him uncomfortable but he wasn't quite ready to step away from code names in the course of what was, as far as he could tell, Avengers business. "Cap is fine." Pietro might have sneered even harder, at this, but it was honestly hard to know the difference.

"Of course, yes," Wanda said. "Mister Cap. Some young people of my acquaintance. That is some other young – mutant – people. The X-Men. The X-Man Angel has access to some property in a state. I believe it is called Colorado? He has there a house. And mountains. Or he does not –" She was twisting the gloves even harder. "He does not have the mountains, I know, but as I said before he has access to – that is. . ."  


Pietro cut in, the words spilling in a torrent so that Steve could hardly make them out. "It's winter break and she wants us to go skiing with her friends."

" _Our_ friends!" his sister cried indignantly. "Pietro, you know that Miss Marvel Girl made especially certain to be clear that we both were to be included in the invitation."

"That doesn't make them _my_ friends . Oh, very well. For a gang of paramilitary vigilantes who zip around the world in _matching_ uniforms I suppose they aren't so bad. I will say this for the X-Men: they never tried to kill me in a fight I did not start."  


Clearly more at ease squabbling with her brother than asking her squad leader for a favor, Wanda stood up and turned on him. "This is not the truth. The X-Men are heroes and would never have killed us."

"You are correct," Pietro agreed. "They would have never have killed me because they would have needed to catch me, which I will have you know, Captain–" He glared at Steve as though somehow they had been arguing this point. "They never took me down once."

"Hmm," said Wanda, as though she could have disputed this.

Steve attempted a conciliatory gesture. "It doesn't seem likely that, if the X-Men still held a grudge and wanted to kill you, they would invite you to go skiing. Right?"

Pietro bit his lip, seeming to ponder the point. " _Jean_ would not," he said at last. As though it were entirely possible that other members of the X-Men might happily turn a friendly ski weekend into a death trap. Granted, the briefing Steve had been given on the mutant group had been lacking in many particulars, to the point that he could in no way guarantee that Pietro was wrong about this. However, considering that the Maximoff twins, two formerly self-proclaimed "evil mutants," had been welcomed into the Avengers with open arms, Steve was willing to extend the X-Men some benefit of the doubt.

"All right, then," Steve said. "It sounds like both of you are okay with this arrangement, so –"

Wanda pressed her hands together. "May we please, Captain. Please please please. I have tried so very hard to be _so_ very good, and I do dearly love being an Avenger. But sometimes, Captain, I do miss the mountains so much and though I know that Aspen, Colorado is not the same as my home in Wundagore –"

"You're not leaving forever, right? You mean just a week or so? I'm sure Hawkeye and I can hold the fort, and the Fantastic Four are right down the street. You'll just have to ask – that is – ask someone who I suppose is . . ."  


Pietro raised one of his formidable eyebrows. "Are you not the team leader?"

"Well. Of course. I – yes, I mean, technically, in the field. But, well, that is." Steve's quick eyes caught a motion in the hallway and with great relief he moved toward it and called, "Tony!"

Tony Stark, looking impossibly dapper in (for some reason) a white suit, stepped around the nearest corner. "I didn't want to interrupt." Flashing a  
bright smile at Steve, he said, "You were doing so well." Then he walked into the room as though he owned it (probably because he did), and half-leaned, half-sat on the edge of the desk that was theoretically Steve's. Tony looked around the room at the three Avengers as though he was planning to challenge them all to a game of tennis but wasn't in any hurry about it.

Wanda began to say, "Mister Stark –" but Steve, fearing that it would take her another twenty minutes to reach the point of her request, jumped in instead.  


"The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver have received an invitation to go to Aspen for a week with the X-Men. For a ski vacation. They were asking if the Avengers could spare them --?" He let the question hang in the air, hoping Tony would handle this with characteristic aplomb. Avengers money was Stark money, after all. They ran into some conflict with this, but now he was happy to let someone else be in charge. He had never technically even been a commanding officer in the military. While he was entirely comfortable giving orders in the field, Steve had no real experience being a _boss_.  


"What did you tell them?" Tony asked. "You _are_ the team leader."

"Right," Steve said, "all right. I'm sure it will be. . .that is. Scarlet Witch. Miss Maximoff. Your services to the Avengers have been invaluable. That is to say," he added hastily when the word seemed to confuse her (rightly so; stupid word), "Your services, and those of your brother Quicksilver, have been _extremely_ valuable over the past month. On the condition that you carry with you at all times your Avengers communicator – which I will do my very best to use only in an actual world-threatening emergency of the cosmic scale – I hereby grant you one week – no. Two weeks of paid vacation. Effective immediately."

"Oh, thank you!" Wanda cried. Her diffidence of a few moments before had completely evaporated, and she lunged forward to crush Steve in a tight hug. He emerged from it coughing a little and did his best to pay no attention to Tony's responsive smirk. Tony could always find something to smirk about. There was no need to encourage him.

Meanwhile, Wanda had started hugging her brother. "I am going to call Jeannie right away!" she cried, then looked at Steve and Tony with a blazing smile.  


"We must immediately shop for _hats_!"

When she raced for the door, Steve turned to Tony. "It amazes me the things she can get excited about."

If he had been hoping for some manful solidarity, he didn't get it when Stark walked to the door, stuck his head out, and called after Wanda, "Try Bloomingdales! The selection is amazing this year." Walking back into the room, he shrugged. "I like to give the world the advantage of _all_ my areas of expertise."

Pietro, who had lingered behind, coughed and said, "Thank you." Directed at both of them. Turning just to Steve, he said, "I know you do not always understand the way my sister behaves. This seems small and silly to you. But imagine her asking the same question to Magneto. He would not have been so entirely receptive."

Wanda's voice floated in from the corridor. "Brother!" she called. "I will be gone soon without you!"

"I'm already there," Pietro called back, and by the time the words finished he was gone.

Steve slumped down in his chair. "That was exhausting," he said to Tony. "I just dealt with a minor request and I said _yes_ and I still feel like I'm an insensitive jerk who screwed everything up." He shook his head. "Is personnel management really part of my job?"

"Leadership is leadership, Cap," Tony answered. "Not just the fun stuff. Every time you deal with something like this? You learn from it."

"Please do not tell me that Iron Man and the other Avengers walked off and left me in charge of this team so that I could learn a lesson about middle management?"

"I can't say I thought of it that way."

Steve narrowed his eyes. "I never even said _you_ thought of it."

"It's an important lesson," Tony said, with an air of virtue that Steve found suspicious. This was not the way he said things that he really meant.

"Great." Steve leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms behind his head. "Now next time you need to replace a human resources manager in Skokie, you have your guy."

"Oh I don't know about all that." Tony tapped the desk and walked toward the door. "Skokie's an important market," he called over his shoulder. "And you're just learning."

"Very funny," said Steve, and then, "Tony? Do you really have this kind of conversation with your employees all the time?"

"Like this? Are you kidding? I'd have Pepper do it. And before you ask, you cannot have her. Not in an a million years."


End file.
